Is desalination environmentally safe?
The world is slowly reaching up to the challenge of minimizing harmful impact. Compared to the many ways of (miss-) managing water today, desalination has a minimal impact on the environment. The following list give some examples of how desalination may impact the environment. • Desalination produces highly concentrated salt brines that may also contain other chemical pollutants. Safe disposal of this effluent is a challenge but there are techniques to do it with zero impact in the marine environment. • Impingement and entrainment of marine organisms are among the most significant environmental threats associated with seawater desalination. Subsurface and beach intake wells mitigates some of the environmental impacts of open ocean intakes. The advantages and disadvantages of subsurface and beach intake wells are site-specific. • Desalination may reduce the need to take additional water from the environment and, in some cases, offers the opportunity to return water to the environment. W
